Why We Should All Be Wary of the United Nations Rights of the Child
We need less #kindness and more #thinking
Some years ago I got chatting to a pal who worked in the VAW sector (Violence Against Women ie. Rape Crisis shelters). This woman, let’s call her ‘Sally’, is a mother, advocate for refugee women and asylum seekers knew and had worked with Mridul Wadhwa. Wadhwa may be familiar to some as his name has hit the headlines quite a lot in recent months….
You see Mridul, a man who cosplays being a woman, is a firm believer in self-id. He believes any person at any time can ‘declare’ their inner identity and we, regardless of what we see to be true before us, would be expected to validate this fantasy. Whilst this would be annoying (at best) in normal circumstances, a *thinking* person might predict this would be a fairly easy route for predators to gain access to vulnerable women, in a rape crisis centre for example. However Wadhwa had different ideas, going as far as to say that women who had been abused by men and didn’t want men in their spaces were bigoted and needed to be ‘re-educated’. You can see where that reasoning got the centre….
Reality matter folks. If someone is so disconnected from physical reality they are perhaps not the best judge of what is going to be morally and ethically best. Someone like that chooses to live in fantasy land and this might impact their good judgement to see potential harms.
Of course when I was having this conversation none of the above had happened yet. This was 2018, 2019 perhaps. Conversations around trans issues were still tentative. My friend Sally* defended ‘vulnerable trans women’ accessing the Rape Crisis service. (her words) She indicated that early on some vulnerable ‘trans women’ (young men) showed up at the door and they felt they *had* to help. Like little lost kittens.
It was her (and others) naivete/ignorance that set the precedent. Not bad people, but not thinking people….
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I can imagine (and I have seen) some lost looking souls who have convinced themselves they are something they are not. Individuals whom need support. And my friend pointed out there was ‘No where else for them to go! What else could we do?’. Well hindsight is a powerful thing. Mayhaps had they used their ‘thinking’ they could have come up with a better solution. Instead the non-thinking individuals took the easy route. And here.we.are.
People can pontificate about the utopia they’d like to live in but very unfortunately bad people with bad intentions do exist. That’s why policies and laws must always consider things on the outside - not just ‘ideal’ situations. As I have often pointed out good laws are not virtue manifestos.
Which brings us to the UNCRC, The United Nations Rights of the Child. You might be a parent and your school might be a ‘rights respecting school’. What does that mean really? It all sounds perfectly delightful… if you are not a thinking person. I mean WHO DOESN’T WANT CHILDREN TO NOT HAVE RIGHTS? Jerks that’s who!
And Scotland has incorporated these…. into law.
Now it all sounds hunky dory ‘giving our kiddos rights’!. Except, that the things that are useful (perhaps) in here were already illegal and enforceable. So what’s it all about really? (outside of it being another Ponzi scheme….)
There are certain legal things that are odd. Given the fact that our ruling party, the SCOTTISH NATIONAL Party (SNP) is so hell bent on independence from Westminster it is curious why they would sign up for a treaty wherein law is determined by an unelected international body. Surely, we Scots, would be better served developing laws that are managed and organised from within Scotland? Child law is worryingly placed out of the hands of Scottish political processes and into international courts.
Beyond that and to the point of how this intersects with education itself, and the UNCRC Charter scheme- people (and parents particularly) need to realise the language that is being employed around your child in school and public life which derives from this treaty. We no longer have ‘children’ but ‘young people’. The concept of ‘consent’ is introduced from nursery level. And the idea that children have ‘rights’ is pushed as well. Start to pay attention that everything related to children is framed through these phrases/wordings and ideas.
Your children are no longer ‘children’ but ‘young people’, therefore blurring the boundary between adult and child. Children are told they have the ‘right’ to ‘consent’ to what happens to them. They have the right to choose. No where is the vulnerability of children acknowledged, no where is the idea that there are developmental barriers to let’s say…. ‘making good decisions’ referred to. Basically, children are treated as adults. This brings problems.
Not least in the promotion of the ‘individual’ rights of the child, the family unit is subsumed. Now let’s be clear, there are *some* families who are incapable of meeting the needs of their children. According to Scottish governments own statistics on children who end up in care they make up between .015-.5% of children in Scotland. Which means that over 99% of children are in safe homes, with parents who are doing a good job. So why would these things need to be embedded into law when clearly there is not really a problem?
Is there an intentional obfuscation between child poverty and child neglect? Child poverty is a *huge* issue in Scotland. In Glasgow 34% of children aged 0-15 were living below the ‘bread line’ in 2023. But poverty and child neglect should not be mixed up. They are not the same and they do not require the same approach. Child poverty needs to be addressed by strong economic strategies to raise family’s income as an example.
It is worth noting the well known correlation between educational attainment and financial stability. In other words a good education will lift children out of poverty. This the UNCRC is not. In fact Scotland is facing the worst literacy rates in decades. Yet there seems little appetite to address that, just listen to a local council education meeting as evidence of that (I dare you, your head will spin). Or pay attention to teacher union motions. You will observe how precious little time is spent on actual education. So what is going on?
On the surface the UNCRC seems very ‘nice’. Why wouldn’t we adopt it? I understand that the only hesitation in the past was the funding involved in the scheme itself. Since the Scottish Government has decided to foot the bill (in a time of utter financial ruin) many schools have happily signed up. (last I checked the scheme cost £800 per year, plus teacher resource) And I appreciate it takes some genuine interrogation to understand the controversy and problems associated with this program. As they say ‘beware of candy houses’….
Indeed when I first saw the UNCRC I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me. My first thought was that - even with the best will in the world - I didn’t understand the value it brought to children’s lives. What I heard more often is children getting out of chores by saying to parents ‘I have a right to play!’. This matched my ongoing observation of the lack of investment in things children actually enjoy and benefit from -say sports, drama, dance, science, outdoor clubs etc… And I started to notice the consultation industry seems to be increasing by leaps and bounds in the face of these ‘children’s rights’ frameworks which hardly seemed a good use of resources.
One of the criticisms that has come out about UNCRC is that it teaches all rights and no responsibilities. Which is fair. I have previously written about the ‘arsenal of narcissism’, there is a lot of focus on child-led, child-voice, child-rights, which creates a kind of myopia in the classroom. It’s no wonder teachers struggle to maintain authority when kids are left in a chaos space of ‘choice’ with no consequences for their actions.
But the glaring and most obvious problem of this program is the undermining of the family. And that is huge and it has huge implications for our children and home life.
Professor Christopher Lasch writes in Harper's Magazine in October 1992 in criticising the UNCRC: ‘the ‘traditional’ family is, for the most part, an institution in need of therapy, an institution that stands in the way of children’s rights - and an obstacle to enlightened progress’. His analysis was, that the UNCRC creates a framework where ‘enlightenment’ and ‘progress’ can only be achieved when the child is separated from the antiquated institution of the family.
The precursor to the UNCRC was the ‘Declaration on the Rights of the Child’ (1959) and again whilst it was valuable I would not expect it to be taught to primary school children. Are we making them all into lawyers from nursery?
Interestingly in 1989 when many world governments signed up to the UNCRC the Vatican asserted firm reservations in particular where parents and children could be set against each other. Catholic teachings- indeed the whole Judeo-Christian belief system - is rooted in the belief that inalienable rights come from God, not governments.
The triad set out in Catholic schools is the relationship between parents-the school-the church. Parents have the highest authority as they have been gifted by God to care for their children. The UNCRC contradicts this. Catholic papal encyclicals such as ‘Humane Vitae’ and ‘Familiaris Consortio’ outline why in more detail.
“The Holy See, in conformity with the dispositions of Article 51, accedes to the Convention on the Rights of the Child with the following reservations… (b) that it interprets the Articles of the Convention in a way that safeguards the primary and inalienable rights of parents, in particular as these rights concern education (Articles 13 & 28) religion (Article 14) association with others (Article 15) and privacy (Article 16).”
These reservations were never added to the treaty but they should be paramount in Catholic schools, and Catholic parents. (as a Catholic parent this is relevant to me hence my knowledge therein)
Article 5 nominally safeguards the rights of parents however legal analysts suggest that this article is of very little value as the ‘children’s rights’ elements override it. Therefore parents cannot have authority over their children but merely assist them in the development of their rights. This suggests that parental conduct will be subject to state scrutiny, that ultimately enforcement will prove to be anti-parent as the State rights supplant parental authority. Which again is counter to Catholic doctrine and what most if not all parents would actually agree to.
We have seen in the case of the ‘trans issue’ in school, where children are radicalised by LGBT Youth Scotland, the dubious organisation which has been in the papers quite a lot recently for it’s connection to child harms which I have written about here. (paedophiles, check; irreversible bodily damage, check; ideology over safeguarding, check…)
board member Dr. Jenny Cunningham writes:To be blunt, LGBT Youth Scotland is actively recruiting young people to become ‘transgender’ (or ‘transgender-identifying’) and demanding that ‘gender-affirming treatment’ should be available for them, regardless of age and of any of the coexisting problems they may have.
Parental doubts or opposition was met with accusations that they were harming their children by not affirming their gender identity − or that they were even exposing them to the risk of suicide. In several cases, parents were referred to social services on the grounds of child abuse, either by the school or, in one case, by a mental health clinician. What is so dreadful is that family relationships have been seriously, perhaps irrevocably, damaged.
Is this what can be expected in the long term?
As I have pointed out most people, and Headteachers and teachers included, wish no harm upon children. Most will only see the ‘vanilla', ‘nice’ elements of these laws, most will employ #kindness. But kindness is not enough. As we can see above how quickly a parents right and genuine concern for their children are overridden in the name of the child’s ‘right’ to choose, to consent, to do something very dangerous they cannot possibly understand.
And this is where we have to be #thinking. It’s not enough to ‘just let these things in’ and only do a ‘soft sell’. Because even if a school, headteacher, teacher is doing an ‘interpretation’ of this program they are propping up an infrastructure that ultimately will bring harm.
Which brings me to the latest revelation about UNCRC. You may remember that I drew your attention to Colin Morrison the individual who has written the Scottish RSHP. Colin Morrison did his PhD on the sexuality of disabled children. (Charlotte Gill should add this to her list of insane PhDs)
His PhD didn’t end up in some dusty cupboard, it laid the groundwork for Scottish Education’s own Relationship and Sex Ed program.
Colin Morrison was a co-founder (and until recently co-founder) of the Children’s Parliament is also very excited about UNCRC.
I have written at length about the problems with Scotland’s Relationship & Sex Ed program. Mostly notably the aim to subvert the parent child relationship as what was previously contained in the family realm is now exorcised in the educational public space. As Jennifer Bilek writes this commodification of the body and relationships serves to separate us from our very natural, evolutionary processes of being human. The most obvious and ultimate representation of that is in the ‘colonisation’ of the living as seen in the transgender movement, wherein body parts are merely commodities to be traded. And our children are an important part of that takeover. In certain circles there are already rumblings of concern that the UNCRC will serve as ‘self-id’ through the back door as children are ramped up on a junk food diet of ‘rights’ manipulated in their narrow view of themselves by nefarious players.
The flip side of that is the commodification of rights related to sexual experiences. Children are also being taught sex ed as if it is a platter of choices. However contrary to these resources, one does not learn about relationships through books, or lists, but by living. One parent said to me ‘it’s as if the film is given to children before reading the book, therefore denying their agency to create their own interpretation’.
What’s more, none of these resources mention ‘boundaries’. Only Catholic schools embedded in Catholic teachings base their interpretation of ‘sex ed’ - ‘God’s Loving Plan’ on the basis of human dignity (as gifted by God). Of course we can all acknowledge the Catholic Church has been less than exemplary historically and of course we should never (as demonstrated by this post) take our eye off the ball. However, and that to the side, I think the Catholic schools have a better grasp on what is good for children.
But the UNCRC march into our children’s lives does not end there. The UN is proposing a Treaty on Cybercrime which could make it acceptable to create and possess explicit materials involving children - as long as it’s deemed ‘private’ or ‘consensual’. In other words they are moving to decriminalise child pornography.
New UN Cybercrime Treaty Opens Door to Pedophilia and Legalizes Child Sexting [C-Fam]: https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/new-un-cybercrime-treaty-opens-door-to-pedophilia-and-legalizes-child-sexting/
New UN Cyber Crime Treaty May Favor “S*xual Rights” for Kids [C-Fam]: https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/new-un-cyber-crime-treaty-may-favor-sxual-rights-for-kids/
Draft United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime (In English) [United Nations]: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/v24/055/06/pdf/v2405506.pdf
Jenny Holland has written previously on the UN's very dubious relationship in using consent as a basis for decriminalising prostitution between ‘consenting adults’. In fact the UN goes further to say “sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual.” So it doesn’t actually say sex with minors is ok, but it doesn’t say it isn’t either. Is this where we are headed?
Using those ever present ‘consent’ principles children will be led to believe they have ‘agreed’ to participate in sexual acts and the creation of materials. What’s more their ‘acknowledgement’ of ‘consent’ will mean there is nothing we can do about it.
Children cannot consent, they lack the developmental capacity to understand consequences nor can they be expected to take responsibility for outcomes when they happen. I draw your attention to the increase in sextortion cases amongst children. Sextortion is when a predator using a fake identity contacts a child online and starts a conversation. Often posing as girls or women, they convince children to send explicit images of themselves online. Once they have the images they then demand payment or threaten to go public with what they had coerced the children to do. Murray Dowey from Dunblane was one such child he committed suicide with the strain of what he had done.
I cannot believe the unbelievable heartbreak Murray’s parents must be feeling right now. Where is Scot Gov? Curiously absent. It’s the parents who pick up the pieces. Always.
Now let’s be clear, most adults do not wish harm upon children. However if you are holding up the scaffolding of this particular endeavour you are participating in harm that will comes to someone’s children. How would you feel it that was yours?
Now is not the time for #kindness but the time for realtime thinking. Don’t get caught out.
Special thanks to current subscribers, if you are a free subscriber could you consider becoming a paid subscriber? As of next post I am upping my subscription fee - but for NOW - a yearly subscription is just £30 per year, £4.00 per month or founding membership £250. Every penny makes a difference & allows me to continue advocating for children & childhood. It is much needed and much appreciated. Or buy me a coffee? Thank you!
